


Rivers and Roads

by SomeEnchantedEve



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Childhood, F/M, Falling In Love, Sexual Content, Sexual Experimentation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2013-02-18
Packaged: 2017-11-23 00:10:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/615914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomeEnchantedEve/pseuds/SomeEnchantedEve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Kink Meme Prompt: "Instead of Petyr, Ned is fostered in Riverrun, and gets up to teenage shenanigans with Hoster Tully's eldest daughter." </p><p>"He is eight when he is sent to the Riverlands, and when he is told that he shall go there, he thinks there are a thousand other places that he would rather be."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1 - Ned

**Author's Note:**

> So while this can kind of stand by itself, I most likely will continue it because I still have some ideas I would like to explore! But it came to a nice stopping point, for this part, and rather than wait until it had doubled in length, I decided to at least post this part. =) Hope you enjoy!

The games start innocently, and when he thinks back upon it, Ned knows if they had not been meant harmless and in jest, they would not have started at all. 

He is eight when he is sent to the Riverlands, and when he is told that he shall go there, he thinks there are a thousand other places that he would rather be. He would most prefer to be home in Winterfell, of course – Father was to take him hawking when the summer snows melted, and in the months before he left, Lyanna would constantly demand that Ned take her to the hot springs in the godswood to play (and who would take her now?). Little Benjen is barely more than a babe, and Lyanna but four, and Ned worries that he will be as much a stranger to them as Brandon has become. It may even be worse, he thinks – for Brandon is fostered in the North and so is able to return home upon occasion. Perhaps, Ned thinks, he would not hate the idea so fiercely if he did not have to travel so far south, to a strange land a thousand leagues from home. 

Ned strives to be a dutiful son, to obey and respect his lord father, but he cannot help but object at the unfairness of it all, to protest that he should be fostered with one of the northern bannermen as Brandon is, a notion that makes Rickard Stark curl his lip in displeasure until Ned falls silent. “Brandon will be Lord of Winterfell someday,” he explains. “He should remain in the North. But there is much to be found in the South, Ned, and the Starks have been making northern matches long enough.”

And that is the reason he is sent, he learns – a match that Lord Rickard hopes to make, between his heir and Hoster Tully’s eldest daughter. “Ned is a good, quiet boy, he’s unlikely to cause trouble,” Ned had heard his father confiding in the maester soon before his departure, before he arrives in the Riverlands to serve as his Lord Rickard’s foothold in the south, a constant reminder of House Stark until Hoster’s daughter grows to an age suitable for betrothal. 

Many of his lessons are taken with the Tully girls, for Edmure is still a babe, and for lack of other boys his age with which to play, Ned often finds himself spending the afternoons by the river with Lady Catelyn and Lady Lysa as well. Catelyn at seven is taller than he is, all thin long limbs and wild red hair – she is called ‘Cat’ but she reminds Ned more of a fawn than a cat, with all the awkwardness of new growth, making her somewhat clumsy and ungainly at times. Lysa is small as Lyanna had been, only five, but determined to keep up with her elder sister, clinging to Catelyn’s skirts so that she may follow on her short little legs. Lysa is quiet and shy, but her sister is not - Catelyn has the innate bossiness borne of an eldest child, so that Ned often finds himself acquiescing to whichever games she has decided they will play that day. 

Come-into-my-castle is his least favorite as Catelyn and Lysa claim to be river lords that he does not know, come to pay heed on the banks of the Trident, and neither girl recognizes the bannermen of House Stark when he names them at the makeshift gate made of twigs and shrubbery. When they play Lord of the Crossing, and it is his turn to be the lord, he is too nervous to use the staff to knock the girls into the river, especially as Lysa is not yet a strong swimmer. He finds that Catelyn affords him no such courtesy when it is her turn to guard the crossing (and he suspects Lysa would not if she were big enough to lift the staff). This he minds less – the Riverlands are humid and warm and the bracing cold of the river waters is a relief to Ned, like a little piece of home that he can reach down and touch, let run over his fingers. 

Occasionally, Catelyn will decide that they will play knights and maidens, and with her shift hiked up around her hips, so that her legs are immodestly exposed, she will wade to a small island that pierces the water’s surface in the middle of the river and demand that Ned fetch her. He is not as strong of a swimmer as she is – he has spent years in the Winterfell hot springs but there is no current to fight against there; and so the game most often ends with Catelyn leading the way back to the shore, her fingers clutched in his as they splash through the water to the muddy banks, and she teasingly declares him a hopeless knight. 

One time he manages, from sheer determination to prove her wrong, to show that he _will_ be a valiant knight when he is grown; he lets her climb upon his back, and she shrieks with laughter as she wraps her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his hips. The water offers enough buoyancy to keep her nearly weightless until he nears the shallows, and then he grips under her knees as he tries to scale the bank with her now heavy and sodden and her arms like iron clamps around his neck. Her laughter only grows when he slips and they fall into the mud, and her joy is so infectious that he can’t help but smile in return despite his trepidation that the girls’ septa will see his ears boxed now that both of their clothes are dirty and torn. 

She proclaims him a true knight after all, and there is a wicked gleam in her eyes when she adds that he should be rewarded as a knight in the songs. There are few singers in the North and Ned does not know to which songs she refers, but as he tries to wrack his mind, Catelyn closes the distance between them and suddenly presses her lips to his. They are wet and cold from the river, and her nose bumps his hard enough to hurt; shocked and perturbed, he draws back. He remembers the last time he saw Brandon, when his brother came to visit just before Ned’s departure for the Riverlands, and how he saw Brandon kiss no less than three of the kitchen maids in his moon’s length stay in Winterfell. “There is nothing sweeter than a woman’s kiss,” Brandon had told him later, when he had noticed that Ned had stumbled upon him. 

Ned doesn’t see what the fuss is, he thinks he likes being kissed not at all, and before he can stop himself, he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He feels guilty a moment later – he may not want to kiss her, but Catelyn is a lady, and he does not want to hurt her feelings. But she merely laughs again, unbothered, and scrambles to her feet, bounding off to join her sister where she plays by the edge of the trees, her wet red hair waving like a banner behind her. 

He thinks perhaps it is a good thing that his father has determined that Brandon is to marry Catelyn, if they both enjoy kissing so much. He does not try again to win the game, the next time they play knights and maidens, in the hopes that it will spare him from future rewards. 

And it does, for a time. And for that time, the games stop altogether, because when he is ten, Lady Tully dies in childbed and nearly overnight, Cat goes from a child to a lady, and she leaves Lysa and Ned to their own devices in the afternoons. Ned finds that he misses her steady presence, domineering as it had been at times, especially now that Lysa looks to him for guidance as to what she should do, and in her grief, is still prone to fits of tears. He has limited experience with little sisters, and Lyanna had not been nearly as delicate and sensitive as Lysa. 

Catelyn, on the other hand, Ned never sees cry, even on the day of the water burial that is the custom of House Tully. The raft had caught alight in flames and Cat had squeezed her siblings’ hands tightly but not wept, and Ned had watched her from a ways back, studied her ramrod straight back and her bright hair drawn back and tied with a grey ribbon. 

It is as though Cat’s childlike laughter and whims, her fondness of carefree games, had erupted in fire with the raft and thus been eviscerated. In the months that pass after her mother’s death, she instead spends time caring for Edmure, reading to him at night and seeing that he is well-attended by his nursemaids; she spends time with the stewards, making orders for supplies and for goods for the townfolk as though she were the lady of Riverrun in truth and not a mere girl of nine, and those orders are obeyed. Though Ned is older by a year, he feels suddenly that she is entirely too grown for him. 

When she misses their lessons one morning, and Maester Vyman furrows his brow in displeased surprise at her absence, Ned offers to look for her. She is not meeting with Wayn to go over the household accounts, nor in council with her father who relies more and more each day on her enormous sense of duty and responsibility, nor in Edmure’s nursery, and so instead he wanders out onto the castle grounds, towards the edge of the godswood where they would once play. 

He finds her there, stretched out on her back in the grass, far enough from the mud of the riverbank that she will not dirty her gown. Her eyes are closed, her face turned up to the sun even as the heat of it makes Ned swelter, sends a trickle of sweat along his temple and down his neck. 

He hesitates, wondering if she is sleeping, but his question is answered nearly as quickly as he thinks it as her eyes pop open at the sound of his heavy boots clomping through the grass. She tilts her head back to look at him, and he sees a trace of guilt lingering in her eyes that her absence had been so quickly noted. 

Ned waits, but Cat offers no explanation, no excuse; instead she sighs heavily and closes her eyes once more. He wonders if he should leave her, give her privacy, but instead he stretches out quietly next to her, looking up at the blue sky; the bright colors of the Riverlands are always so vivid, almost obtrusive, and he often finds himself longing for the bare simplicity of home. 

“I’m just tired,” Catelyn tells him quietly, blinking her eyes open again and glancing over at him. When he meets her gaze, her eyes are the same shade as the sky, and they seem as glassy as the river’s surface on a lazy, calm day. For a moment, he panics, worried that she may begin to cry, and uncertain as to what to say if she does. Lyanna and Benjen had been too young to understand when their own mother had died, and Ned had bottled his grief up tightly inside; he does not know what to do, with a lady’s tears. 

But instead she merely shifts closer to him, lifting her head and laying it on his chest, so that his view is entirely obscured by the red of her hair, and the strands of it tickle against his neck. He tries to think of the proper words of comfort to offer her, the way that Brandon was able to for him though his jaw had worked against his own pain, but nothing comes to mind and so he remains silent, as quiet as he ever is, and hopes she will not be offended by his lack of speech. 

If anything, his silence seems to bring her comfort, and she sighs again, her body relaxing against his. Hesitantly, he puts his hand on her back, on top of the jut of her shoulder-blade through the thick fabric of her gown, rubbing his thumb in soothing circles, and he hopes that will be enough. 

The heat is nearly unbearable, the sun blazing down, the plush green grass as thick and soft as a cloak beneath him, Catelyn’s warm body leaning up against him. But resolutely, he waits until the sun begins to dip below the horizon, when Cat finally sits back up and wipes her dress and rubs a bit at her eyes, though from what he can see, no tears have fallen. “Thank you,” she says simply, and he stares at her agape, uncertain as to what he did worthy of being thanked, wishing that he had known what to do more. 

The next day, he receives a sharp rebuke from Vyman for using Cat’s absence to skive off his own lessons, and repentantly, he bows his head and does not protest. Catelyn smiles at him, for that, and in the weeks that follow, she sometimes finds the time to once more join him and Lysa by the river after the day’s lessons are complete. 

\--

The games are different, now, and less fantastical than they once were. Instead, Cat practices going to court, sweeping a curtsy, and mimics their dancing maester. She and Lysa laugh and spin in dizzy circles together, their colorful skirts in Tully red and blue swirling. She uses her embroidery lessons to weave together garlands of flowers in white and yellow and pink that she sets upon first her sister’s hair before making one for herself, and she runs through the godswood like a wood sprite with petals tumbling down her shoulders, calling for Ned to try and catch her. 

He could, if he wished it – he has grown and he is now her height with long legs and a slim torso, and he thinks he is faster than her, too. He could catch her if he wished it, but he is not sure what would happen if he did, and so he lets her win, breathless and pink-cheeked in her triumph as she reaches the reeds at the edge of the riverbank. 

He first catches her soon after her twelfth nameday, after her father acquiesces to Ned’s father’s wishes, and agrees that Brandon and Cat should be betrothed. The news pleases Ned for the sole reason that it means his father and brother come to visit Riverrun, to set the terms of the contract and so that Brandon may meet his future bride. 

They stand at the gate with the rest of the household, Lysa breathless with excitement and her eyes shimmering, Edmure sitting in a most unlordly heap and playing with a small toy, and Cat white as snow in a dress laced far too tightly, to try and create the illusion of a woman’s body on her thin, straight shape. It is rather stupid, Ned thinks, for she isn’t to be married today and certainly his father and brother will have more of a worry about Cat’s health if she faints from not being able to breathe than if she appears not yet grown, but he does not offer his thoughts – nor is he asked for them. 

The sight of the flickering Stark banners on the horizon, of the grey direwolf on the field of white, is like coming home. Ned’s heart leaps into his throat, and the longing for Winterfell is a physical ache in his chest. For all that he is well-treated and well-regarded in Riverrun, the humid south will never be his home and he will never quite belong in this riverside castle. 

But when he sees his brother for the first time, when Brandon and his father dismount to greet them, Ned is stunned; in the time since they had seen one another last, Brandon has become a man, tall and broad and with the prickle of a beard beginning to form on his cheeks. He nearly crushes Ned in a fierce embrace, and he smiles charmingly at Cat and kisses her hand. “My lady,” he greets, his voice a low timbre, and Ned watches as a flush of pink stains Cat’s cheeks. She looks tiny next to Brandon, like a little porcelain doll that his elder brother could accidentally break, and instinctively, Ned tries to stand a little straighter, a little taller. 

“She’s pretty,” Brandon tells him later, approvingly, when they sit at the feast welcoming the Starks to Riverrun. “Just a child, but she’ll grow.” And Ned looks at his cup of wine – just a small amount, whilst Brandon keeps heedlessly refilling his own despite their father’s glares of warning – and wonders if he should tell Brandon about Cat, if that is part of what he is expected to do, the purpose he is supposed to serve in Riverrun. Should he tell his brother the careful, sweet way that Cat cares for Edmure, so that he should be assured that she will be a good mother one day to the future heir of Winterfell? Should he mention the sorts of flowers that she likes to braid in her hair, that she most often wears blue? That she is courteous and kind to the cooks and maids, but sometimes will steal into the kitchen to filch a lemon from the stores, biting into the sour fruit and crinkling her face as though she is surprised at what she finds? Is he supposed to mention that though she is a high-born lady, she does not mind the plentiful rain they so often find themselves caught in, or mud between her toes and fingers? 

Ned cannot imagine that Brandon would have any interest in such things, not when his brother laughs and drinks with his companions from the North and speaks of battle and wenching, of riding the Rills and of tales come from the Free Cities. That is why he hoards the information, he tells himself – because Brandon would not care. After all, he reasons, if he did, certainly he would ask, and Ned resolves that if his brother _does_ ask, he will be truthful. 

Brandon does not ask, but in the weeks after his departure, Cat and Lysa certainly ply Ned for information. Brandon is all that the two care to speak of – how handsome, how gallant, how tall and charming, building a man more of myth more than the brother that Ned knows. Catelyn brings her embroidery out by the river and works furiously to try and sew the direwolf, pleading with Ned to help her trace the pattern. Lysa sighs at her sister’s great romance, Hoster Tully chuckles at the sight of his practical-minded daughter swept up in giddiness, and Ned wonders to himself rather bitterly why his father and brother would ride off again and leave him here, now that the pact had been made. No longer would he serve as a pathway to his father’s ambitions; now he only served as a comparison to his elder brother, grander and greater than Ned could ever be. 

What distresses him the most is how inadequate his answers to Catelyn’s questions are, how little he knows of his brother. He can see the puzzlement in Cat’s eyes, how strange it seems to a girl who has spent every day of her siblings’ lives at their side, as he tries to guess the songs Brandon likes (so that she may learn them), what sorts of foods he enjoys (Old Nan, Ned tells her, may remember when the time finally comes for Cat to go to Winterfell). The truth of the matter is that Brandon is more a stranger to him than the Tully children now, is nearly as much of a stranger to Ned as to Cat, and so Ned serves as a poor ambassador for his brother indeed. 

He tires quickly of the discussion surrounding Brandon and the betrothal, of the fact that the entire household chatters as though the wedding is to take place within the moon and not years down the line. It reminds him all too keenly of the uproar that would take place in Winterfell, any time the heir would arrive for a visit, and he and his siblings would be quite forgotten in the excitement of seeing Brandon home. He is old enough now to know that it is a petty jealousy, a childish one, especially for one such as Ned who never relished being the center of attention. He should be glad that Cat found Brandon so much to her liking; he should be pleased that his father’s plans have come to fruition, so that Rickard Stark had had a smile on his usually grim face before departing, had clapped a hand on Ned’s shoulder and called him a credit to his house, and for a moment, Ned had stood nearly as tall as Brandon. 

But in truth, it stings to be so quickly forgotten by those he has spent so much time with, as though he never mattered at all. Instead of continuing to offer poor answers to their questions, he tries to talk of other things; when the girls will not relent, he leaves them to spend extra time in the training yard, working at the archery butts and training with the Riverrun master-at-arms, who is so impressed with his redoubled efforts that he is finally allowed blunted steel rather than his wooden practice sword. 

Cat comes to watch one morning, hovering at the gate to the practice yard, and he studiously ignores her, keeping his eyes pointedly averted, until he misses a series of parlays and he is abruptly dismissed until ‘he has his head together once more.’ 

“What is it?” he asks, an edge of irritation in his voice at his own missteps – he remembers Brandon, at the feast, boasting of his placement in his first tourney and how he planned on riding the lists again soon. Ned’s father had laughed then, had said he didn’t know where Brandon got his love of pageantry from, but he seemed not to mind, seemed amused by his son’s enthusiasm. Ned, on the other hand, has never seen the point of tourneys, thought them a stupid display of skill better held tight to the vest in case it was one day needed in truth. _Just another way that we are different,_ he thinks, and he need not ask to know which of them is preferred in Riverrun. (And who would not prefer Brandon, he thinks – gregarious, mirthful Brandon?)

“Are you angry with me?” she asks boldly, and Ned glances briefly up at her – Cat has never been shy and retiring the way he is told ladies should be, but he prefers it that way, likes that he rarely has to figure her out because she is eager to tell him what is on her mind. He thinks things would be simpler if more ladies were that way. “Or with Lysa? Why have you been avoiding us?” 

He heads into the armoury, hearing her soft slippered footsteps following in his wake. It is dark and sooty inside, and it takes a moment for his eyes to adjust after the gleaming sunlight of the yard. He grabs a rag with which to quickly polish the steel, though it is still fairly untouched, and has never drawn blood, and so it gleams like new already. The smiths working at the forge pause to greet Cat, to bow their heads and call her ‘milady,’ and she rewards them with a dazzling smile. “No,” he admits, hanging his sword and locking the cabinet as he has been taught, still avoiding her eye. “I’m getting too old to spend my afternoons playing with girls. I should be training.” 

Cat snorts derisively. “Are you going into battle?” she asks, arching an eyebrow at him the way she does at Edmure, when she suspects he’s gotten into some sort of mischief, and Ned feels another flash of annoyance ripple through his veins. _You were pleased enough to hear about Brandon’s ride in tourney_ , he nearly snaps, and he recalls that later that evening he had heard her beg her father to take her to the next one her betrothed would ride in. 

But instead he shoves his hands in the pockets of his breeches, ducking his head and shrugging. _It is better to be prepared_ , his father would say, _winter is coming_ , but though they are the words of his house, it seems silly to say so. Here in the green, humid Riverlands, lush and growing, the world seems untouched by winter. 

Cat grabs his hand, tugging at it and lifting her skirts with her other hand. “Come on,” she suggests, as though he has not rebuffed her. “Let’s go swimming. It’s so hot.” Her eyes dance merrily. “I’ll race you to the river. Lysa is _dreadfully_ slow, it isn’t any fun at all.” 

She runs, her fingers slipping through his. She doesn’t look back as she darts across the yard and out the gate, over the grass, trusting that he’ll follow. 

He does; he runs hard, this time, harder than he normally does, as though in protest of her teasing him about his practicing. They are barely halfway through the godswood when he closes the distance between them to no more than a pace, and he reaches out and grabs at the back of her dress, his fingers catching in the lacing. Cat yelps in surprise, thrown off balance by the sudden deceleration, her hands flailing to try and grasp something to keep herself on her feet. He stumbles back when she falls against his chest, and puts his hands on her arms to steady her. 

Her face is flushed from exertion when she tilts her face to look up at him. “Cheater,” she calls him, and he bends his head and kisses her. He thinks to turn his head, to that their noses do not collide as they did when she kissed him years ago, and he does not know why he does it other than the fact that she looks pretty with color in her cheeks and her hair falling from its coils, and her body feels nice close to his, and because long ago she had established that he would be rewarded if he won. Her lips are dry and warm this time, and he thinks that makes it much nicer; Ned knows that Hoster made sure that Brandon and Cat had next to no time alone, but he finds himself wondering if Brandon kissed her, while he was here. 

Cat makes a surprised hum at the back of her throat, but she doesn’t pull back, and when he does instead, the corners of her lips quirk up in amusement. She pushes herself upright with a hand planted on the center of his chest, and then she is running again, laughing when she leaves him surprised in her wake. 

She wins the race to the river, as she always does. 

\--

It does not feel wrong, it merely feels like a change in the game – sometimes, now, he is able to catch her and so he kisses her. He no longer thinks of the kisses as awful, but they are still awkward and overeager, trying to learn the way their lips fit together, the way his hand fits on her waist, child’s play rather than any semblance of romance. Lysa discovers this new addendum and demands to be kissed as well; Ned likes this less – Lysa is so young – and manages to escape most times by letting her win the races on her short little legs, so that she is breathless in delight at her triumph and forgets what she had wanted in the first place. They are harmless afternoons, and he barely thinks upon those days in the godswood when his brother dutifully visits, about once a year, to spend time with his betrothed. They are only games – hardly a betrayal. 

Ned hates Brandon’s visits nearly as much as he loves his brother, nearly as much as Ned loathes himself for resenting him so. For a fortnight before Brandon’s arrival with his retinue, the castle is thrown into chaos to ready itself, Cat pulls out her best gowns to wear, and Ned resigns himself to being invisible until the Stark banners once more disappear into the horizon. 

“After the wedding, we’ll both go home,” Brandon tells him on one such visit, wrapping an arm around his shoulder, and Ned thinks it is the only thing he is looking forward to, returning to the North and leaving the humid South behind him. He would miss Edmure and Lysa, but he would miss Cat most of all, and he wouldn’t even have to miss her at all – she would obviously accompany her husband North. _But I would not remain at Winterfell long,_ he thinks miserably – he would be expected to marry and rule a holdfast in his brother’s name. His father seems much less concerned with _his_ marriage than he had been with Brandon’s and Lyanna’s, and no match has yet been suggested for him, so that he feels quite forgotten after all. 

For his part, Hoster Tully seems in no rush to wed his daughter off, though Ned knows she has flowered and soon her fourteenth, then her fifteenth nameday passes. The delay bothers Brandon not at all; he never even mentions it during his visits to Riverrun, but Ned’s father inquires in letters he sends Ned, asking after Catelyn’s health, wondering if Ned knows why Lord Tully still seems so reluctant. 

Catelyn herself seems in no hurry to wed, and Ned wonders if it is mere dutiful obedience that keeps her quiet on the matter, when she seems so enarmoured of Brandon. He asks her one afternoon, a few days after Brandon’s departure, while she leans up against a wide oak tree and weaves a strand of daisies together with deft, long fingers. 

She shrugs, wrinkling her nose as the stem of one of her flowers breaks. “I am content to stay in the South for a bit longer,” she answers, avoiding his eye. It is easy enough for her to do – she keeps her eyes on her work and he is taller than her, now, having finally had a growth spurt, though he knows he isn’t as tall as Brandon was the first time he came to Riverrun, and Ned is older now than his brother had been then. She draws her bottom lip between her teeth ever so slightly, and Ned realizes that the North must be as strange-seeming to her as the South is to him, that it is natural for a girl born in a southron summer to have trepidation of going North to be the mistress of winter. 

“Besides,” she adds, looking back up at him. “Edmure needs me, still.” It is true enough, though Ned thinks Edmure would soon be at an age where he would deny such a thing. Cat has been the closest thing to a mother that the little future lord of Riverrun has known for most of his life, and there are few things that Cat takes more seriously than her responsibility to him. _She will be a good mother in truth one day_ , Ned thinks, not for the first time, but it is the first time he feels a strange pang in his heart at the idea. 

He kisses her, then, beneath the shelter of the oak tree’s overarching branches, in the shadow of its leaves, pressing her up against the rough bark. She tilts her face up to his, her lips parting easily so that he can slip his tongue in her mouth. It is the first time he kisses her outside of one of their races, and somehow it makes it feel all the more elicit, all the more dangerous and yet thrilling. He finds himself wondering if Brandon has kissed her this way, open-mouthed and inquisitive, if that is where Cat learned such a thing. Ned imagines he must have, and he presses all the closer, his hands coming up to cup her jaw, fingers threading through the locks of red hair that frame her face. 

He tells himself it is just practice, just child’s play, though neither of them are particularly children anymore. It is harder to pretend when he sees her swimming in the river the next morn, her dress laid out neatly in the sun to keep it dry and unwrinkled. When they were mere children, he would join her, heedless of the impropriety of it all, each naked as their nameday. Innocent as it had been then, when Cat’s uncle Blackfish had discovered them paddling in the river, he had firmly told them they were not to do such a thing. _I know you mean no harm, but you will ruin her reputation,_ Brynden Tully had told him firmly, and Ned had obeyed – he never wanted to ruin Cat, never wanted to shame or embarrass her. Brandon, he thinks, would have laughed, would have called the Blackfish a dull old man and done as he pleased anyway, but Ned has always been as dutiful as Brandon has been wild, and so he listens to the order. 

Cat rarely swims in the mornings, when the early dew is still cool on the grass and a chill (what is considered a chill in the South, at least) lingers in the air. It is that time of day that Ned finds more enjoyable, when the temperature is most tolerable, and so he enjoys walking before they break their fast, which is how this morn, he accidentally comes upon her. 

He freezes, and cannot help but watch as she lazily strokes her arms through the waters, eyes closed and face turned up to the sun. Today the water is too murky for Cat to be dishonored, but he can imagine well enough the gentle swell of her breasts, the taper of her waist and curve of her hips lingering just below the surface – the body of a woman, no longer a child fit for games of knights and ladies. 

She opens her eyes and looks up to see him watching, and Ned feels his face flush hot, and a thousand apologies are born and die on his lips, so that he can only stare agape at her, too stunned to even avert his eyes. For a moment she stares back, drawing her bottom lip between her teeth the way she does when she is thinking, and to Ned, she looks far less surprised than he feels. She hesitates, opening her mouth as though to call to him, and then closes it again. He takes a small step backwards, nearly tripping over his own two feet. 

The moment is broken when Cat blinks at his clumsiness and then laughs, and ducks beneath the water before he can say anything. She doesn’t call for him to join her, the way she would in their youth, before they knew how much such a thing would be frowned up, but nor does she scold him for invading her privacy. 

He hurries away before she can resurface, and later that night, he thinks of her laugh, of the slick of her hair on her shoulders and over the tops of her breasts, of the look in her eyes when she met his gaze, the hesitation as though she did not know whether to call him closer or send him away. He had spared her such a choice, he thinks, and now he would never know. ( _It is better that way,_ he tells himself – there is only one choice she could have made, should have made, and this way they are both spared.)

He takes himself in hand, lying on his back in bed, and thinks of soft, slippery, wet skin, of chasing Cat through the godswood as he had done a thousand times before and having her on the forest floor as he never had, as he never would. The image of her pretty face flushed pink with pleasure, her hair spilled upon the ground like a thousand autumn leaves swims behind his closed eyelids as he slides his palm along the length of his cock, and he wonders how it would feel to have her touch him instead. He spills his seed over his fingers and his face burns with the shame of it. _It is wrong_ , he tells himself fiercely, as though sheer force of will could chase the thoughts and desires away. _She is going to be my good-sister. She is going to be Brandon’s wife._

(Brandon, he thinks – tall, handsome Brandon whom any maiden would prefer, Brandon who knows nothing of Cat outside of the courteous, shy mask she puts on for his visits once a year.) 

Ned is six and ten, has lived in the Riverlands for half his life, and only now does he realize that they were never really playing games, after all.


	2. Part 2 - Catelyn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be one more part after this, though probably one shorter than the first two. Thank you to everyone who read and left kudos, and a HUGE thank you to everyone who took the time to leave a comment! Getting feedback is a huge motivator and I really appreciate everyone who took time to do so! <3

Catelyn likes to watch Edmure practice at the archery butts, and she feels a strange swell of pride that could be called maternal the first time he lands an arrow on the target (but not yet the bullseye, it will be years of practice until he has mastered the craft). He is only eight, and the intricately carved oak bow is nearly as large as he is, so that he can barely keep it aloft with his tiny, spindly arms. She makes sure to stand back, along the stone wall of the training yard where her presence will go unnoticed – she may like watching her little brother practice, remembering the babe he was and seeing the boy he is and the man he could become, but Edmure _hates_ it when she does so. 

When he has finished his own training with his sword, Ned will sometimes come to assist Edmure with a steadying hand under his elbow, so that Edmure can narrow his eyes and poke his tongue out the corner of his mouth as he takes aim for the center of the target (and misses completely despise his best efforts). Catelyn likes to watch that, as well, and though she cannot distinguish Ned’s words from her distance across the yard, she can hear the patient tone to them and a warm feeling spreads across her chest, from her heart down to her belly. 

While Edmure scowls when he catches sight of his sister, Ned gives no indication that he notices her presence, even when Edmure’s next arrow sails well over the top of the target. He puts his hands on Edmure’s shoulders, straightening the boy’s posture, and in the privacy of being ignored by both boys, Catelyn takes a moment to marvel at how much Ned, too, has grown from the small, silent boy who had come to the Riverlands so long ago. He would never be as tall and broad as his brother Brandon, but nor could Catelyn easily knock him into the river with naught more than a stick as a weapon, the way she had when they were children playing Lord of the Crossing. 

“Well, he takes more readily to your instruction than he ever would to mine,” she teases Ned later, when their lesson has ended. She had put a hand to Edmure’s hair when they had finished, mussing it affectionately and praising his efforts, and he had made a face, pushing her hand from his head before hurrying off to enjoy his free afternoon, leaving her standing alone with Ned. 

Ned smiles wanly as he hangs the bow, replaces the arrows in the block, but he avoids her eye and brushes past her as though she were nothing more than a passing ghost. This is less surprising to Catelyn as it might have been, once – for the last few moons, Ned has gone to every pain to avoid her company as often as he can, and when he must speak with her, to keep his comments short and brusque. The afternoons together spent racing in the godswood, of riding horseback along the river’s edge, of swimming in the large bends of the Tumblestone seem as though they belonged to another life, and she misses them as one would miss a sweet, reoccurring dream. She misses _him_. 

_I have offended him,_ she thinks, _in some manner or fashion._ But whenever she would try and broach the matter, he would change the subject, or deny that she had angered him, or simply walk away, and so she remains quite in the dark as to what her particular offense had been. 

“I am no archer,” he confesses, and she blocks his path as he goes to walk past her once more, to cross the courtyard. A flash of irritation crosses his face, and she sees his nostrils flare as he exhales with a huff, but he remains silent as always. He is always so quiet, so hard to read, and so utterly unlike his brother in that way. Catelyn thinks she has never met two brothers as dissimilar as Brandon and Eddard Stark, one open and wild and the other reserved and restrained. 

“Is that why you have abandoned us?” she teases, trying to set it as a jape. “To tutor Edmure?” 

He raises his eyebrows. “For my own training, as well,” he replies evenly, but he stares at a point just above her head – perhaps the skyline of the trees in the godswood framed behind her. “I’m too old for silly games with you and Lysa, Catelyn.” 

She restrains herself from rolling her eyes at the reminder of the year difference he has so liked to dangle over her head lately, as though he is a man now but she still a mere child. His reason does not ring false - Ned _has_ spent more time in the practice yard as of late, enough that even her father has noticed and remarked upon it with an almost fatherly pride, had said that perhaps the boy would see a knighthood before Catelyn’s wedding to Brandon, before they all left for Winterfell. Ned has always been serious, dutiful and dedicated, and if he had hopes of a knighthood, it is no surprise that Catelyn and Lysa find themselves neglected, she thinks. 

“I know,” she responds softly. “Ser Desmond tells Father of the progress you are making. Father means to see you knighted before I wed.” Hesitantly, she reaches up to cup his cheek, feeling the prickle of his beard against her fingertips. He keeps it trimmed short, but it still feels strange to her, as strange as it had the first time she had felt it against her lips and cheek when they had played at kissing. He stiffens at her touch, and sorrow seizes her chest at his discomfort with her. “But I miss you,” she admits, her voice soft. “Lysa does as well.” 

That, she can admit to herself, is not strictly true; if Lysa even notices Ned’s absence, she does not mention it, but Catelyn knows her sister has always found Ned’s quiet nature rather dull. But for Catelyn, Ned has always been her companion with whom she is free of the responsibilities of being the elder sibling, and there had been something wonderfully equalizing about that. He has always been steady, like a rock she could lean on and rest upon, and without the comfort of his presence, she finds herself weary. 

But now his eyes are cold and hard as granite as he finally meets her gaze. “I’m right here,” he answers flatly, and her heart sinks and she withdraws her hand, clasping them together demurely in front of her. 

_No,_ she thinks sadly, _no, you are far away from me, now._

“And that is kind of your father,” he continues. “But I may prefer to be knighted in the North, my lady.” 

She startles, both at the mention of returning to the North and at the unusual honorific. It brings to mind the shy, awkward boy who first came to Riverrun, who called her Lady Catelyn and her sister Lady Lysa, before they all found friendship and he learned to call her Cat. There is a distant formality to his tone now, which makes her draw a step back, so that their distance is more appropriate to the strangers they seem to be becoming. “That may not be for years,” she manages, when she finds her voice. “The wedding date still has yet to be decided upon.” 

“Perhaps I should return earlier, since your father seems disinclined to make haste,” he suggests quietly, and Catelyn bites her lip against her instinctive sharp intake of breath. It is true that her father has not indicated when her wedding to Brandon Stark would take place, but Catelyn is still only five-and-ten and in no hurry to leave her home and family behind, so she does not press the matter. And yet the plans hatched between their fathers had always been for Ned to accompany Brandon and Catelyn back to Winterfell after they wed in Riverrun, and in truth, Catelyn had counted on it, depended on it. Her betrothed is handsome and gallant, exciting and roguish, but with the leagues between them making visits rare, he is still virtually a stranger to her. She had hoped for the comfort of Ned’s presence, and the safety she always felt therein. 

_But that was the Ned of before,_ she reminds herself, and she blinks rapidly against the sudden tears that fill her eyes, accompanied by the sting of betrayal. _This Ned is a stranger to me, too. I shall be all alone in either case._ Angrily, she wills the tears to remain at bay, as she always does when she feels the urge to cry, as she has done since her mother died and she realized that she would have to be the strong one. 

“Oh,” she replies, and it comes out like a sigh, a shaky release of her breath. She takes a deep breath, lifting her chin and drawing herself up to her full height, composing her expression into the calm mask she uses to greet her father’s bannermen and other visiting lords when they come to call at Riverrun. She suspects that she does not succeed completely in hiding her grief, because Ned’s expression softens, his eyes gentling so that he looks more like the boy she knew than the solemn, cold man he has become as of late. “As you wish,” she adds, her voice icy, as though it does not matter either way to her, as though the thought does not break her heart. 

“Catelyn…” he starts, hesitating, but rather than let herself be rebuffed again, she turns on her heel. Once she would have run, through the courtyard and gate and into the godswood to the river, and he would have followed her. She had never once in her youth looked back to him to make sure that he was in the wake of her footsteps, because she had always trusted that he would follow, had always _known_ he would be there, just as certainly as she knows that he would do no such thing now. 

But she would not be so undignified in any case – if he is a man, she is a lady, and so with her head held high and her skirts gathered in her cold palms, she walks back to the castle. 

Much as she expected, he does not follow her. 

\--

He comes to them in the godswood the next day, though, where she and Lysa sit by the river with their slippers cast aside and their toes dipped in the icy water, unable to bear submerging anything more with the chill in the air, their skirts rucked up to around their knees. She sits on her cloak to keep her gown clean and dry, an effort she would not have made in her youth, but she can still feel the cool dampness of the mud and the dew clinging to the crushed reeds beneath her, a sharp contrast to the sunshine that filters through the canopy of leaves above her and brushes her shoulders. 

Lysa glances up from her book – an old collection of romances, Catelyn knows, worn from cover to cover from repeated readings – and greets him, but Catelyn keeps her eyes firmly on her needlework. Edmure had sought her out the night before, contrite over his sulking when he had seen her in the yard, and had begged her to mend a hole he had torn in his new fur cloak. He had been certain that if he gave it to his nursemaid, she would tell their father, and so he had brought it to Catelyn instead with a half-hearted apology and his eyes full of pleading. Her stitches are neat and tiny, nearly invisible, and she is fairly sure their father will never know it had been mended at all. 

She refuses to look at him when he sits next to her, when he pulls off his boots and thick woolen socks to dip his feet in beside her. His foot brushes hers accidentally, and she jerks back from his touch. He waits patiently, and eventually Catelyn realizes that while she bested him in nearly every game they played in their youth, she will never win a game of being quiet with Ned Stark. “Do you really hate it here so much?” she asks, her voice low enough so as to not carry over to Lysa, but no less full of bitterness in its softness. 

“No,” he answers, his voice equally quiet. “Of course not.” 

“Then why are you so eager to leave?” 

Ned sighs, drags a hand along the length of his long face, and looks out over the stretch of the river. She studies his expression closely; he has grown up here, from a lad to a man, but even after all these years there is still a hint of discomfort in his expression, of displacement, a longing for home and something more familiar. “I’m a man grown, Cat,” he says, and it is nice to hear ‘Cat’ on his lips again, nice enough that she does not turn her face away when he turns his gaze back to her. “How long would you keep me here? I should settle my own household.” 

“You would leave me to journey to Winterfell alone,” she protests, and she is unable to keep the hurt from her voice at the prospect of being abandoned so. 

He gives her a strange look, tilting his head and narrowing his eyes slightly as he scrutinizes her. “You would not be alone,” he reminds her gently. “You would be with Brandon.” 

She flushes at her mistake, glancing down at her lap and the cloak spread over her skirts. Absently, she traces the stitches she has left. “I only meant…” she trails off, and she is spared the need to speak further when Ned leans over and clasps his hand on top of hers. Idly, she remembers as children when they would lay their hands palm to palm to measure their differences, and thinks how large his hands have become, and how callused from his work in the practice yard, so that the skin is rough and dry. 

“I know,” he assures her. He sighs, squeezing her hand briefly. “I’m sorry to have upset you,” he adds quietly, and she wonders if he means it as an apology for his remarks the day before, or his cool manner in the last few moons. Ned does not often speak of his feelings, and even after all these years she finds him difficult to decipher at times, and so she does not push the matter, merely dropping her gaze to their clasped hands. “I will not be with you in Winterfell, Catelyn. I will have a holdfast that I rule in Brandon’s name. I thought that…perhaps it would be best if we learned some distance.” 

Instinctively, she tightens her grip on his fingers, a silent protest to his claim. “There will be leagues of distance soon enough,” she protests, and while she hates the pleading note in her voice, she hates the thought of his departing even more. She pauses, drawing a deep breath, and then continues, forcing her voice into lightness, letting a smile play across her lips. “In a few years, you will be rid of us all, well and good.” 

His thumb presses against the groove of her knuckles, and his eyes hold no trace of laughter when he replies. “I could never truly be rid of you.” 

The words themselves could be an insult, could be a curse, but he holds so tightly and regards her so solemnly that she can only take them as a promise. Lysa forgotten, she leans forward to wrap him in an embrace. For the first time in months, he does not stiffen or draw back, and he holds her fast against his chest so that she can feel the steady thrum of his heart, beating in tempo to her own. 

\--

Catelyn has never seen Lord Bracken and Lord Blackwood in Riverrun at the same time. Their bitter, unending feud, the squabble over land, keeps first one away and then the other, but when she is six-and-ten they finally come to lay their dispute before the Lord Paramount. They each bring with them their households and, she suspects, the households of many of their retainers, all dressed in fine, costly livery, the better to tout their power, their import, the better to sway her lord father to rule in their favor. The Great Hall of Riverrun swells with activity, with noise and music, and Lord Bracken’s singer has the sweetest voice Catelyn has ever heard. 

She sways in her seat, her eyes half-closed in pleasure as the full chords vibrate in her chest, and she asks Ned, seated next to her, to dance with her. He refuses her, and she is not surprised by that – in all his years in Riverrun, she does not think she has ever seen Ned dance, and a second son need not take dancing lessons; she is fairly certain that he does not know how. So instead she dances with Edmure, giving him instruction and wincing as he trods on her feet, letting him return to his seat when one of Lord Bracken’s squires asks her to dance. Next comes Lord Blackwood’s son, Brynden, who praises her beauty and grace to the point of exaggeration, followed by a young page in service to Lord Bracken, who keeps glancing at her breasts and stammering answers to her polite questions. 

The poor boy’s nerves only multiply when Ned approaches, face dark, and takes her hand. “You’ll have to show me what to do,” he tells her gruffly, and Catelyn cannot help but smile as she guides his free hand to her waist and puts her own upon his shoulder. She leads them into a simple waltz, instructing where he should move his feet, and he is nearly as abysmal as Edmure, if she is to tell the truth of it. But while he is awkward and ungainly, he is tall and solid and she likes being in his arms, and they easily move into a second dance, and then a third. 

Lysa comes forward to claim a turn, and when Catelyn returns to her seat, her cup of wine has been refilled, and she drinks thirstily, hoping to chase away the flush in her cheeks and the dryness of her mouth. Her sister looks exasperated with Ned’s lack of talent, and when they turn Ned’s eyes land on her over Lysa’s shoulder. A knight from Lord Blackwood’s party, at least ten years her elder, asks her for a dance, but she politely declines and waits for her sister to finish, so that she may go forward and take Ned’s hand once more. His arm is heavy around her waist, and he holds her closer this time, and she thinks that there is nowhere in the world more comfortable than in his embrace. 

Soon, the bellows of the two visiting lords overtake even the music; their feud could not even wait until the end of feasting, and Catelyn’s father takes them from the hall, up to his solar so that he may hear their cases and make a judgment. In his absence, there is no one to keep the serving maids from refilling their cups, from leaving the jug of wine within their easy reach. A reproach for Edmure as he drains his wine is on Catelyn’s lips, but by the time she finishes her own drink she supposes that one night will not do him any true harm. 

“Dance with me again,” she begs Ned as he finishes his cup, his lips curled in an uncharacteristic smile, and she lays a pleading hand on his knee. His face flushes, and he seizes her hand to pull her to her feet, and the wine makes her near as ungraceful as he is when they twirl around the room to an upbeat tune. 

Her uncle finds them in the hall, the jug of wine near empty on the table, and even his scolding cannot break Catelyn’s good humor. Her attempts at a contrite expression are hampered greatly by Lysa’s failure to keep her giggling under control. Taking inventory of all their giddy, glazed expressions, the Blackfish sends them abruptly off to bed, telling them that he will send for them on the morrow to speak to them. This only serves to raise Catelyn’s spirits more, for if he is sending for them himself, he likely has little intent on telling their father about their mischief, though Lysa scurries from the hall as though Hoster Tully is hot on her heels. Edmure can barely stand, and the Blackfish lifts him to his shoulder like he is a babe in arms still, ignoring his loud protests that echo off the walls as they leave the hall. 

She clasps Ned’s hand as they follow a few moments later, the corridor now silent as the Blackfish has ascended the stairs, and his touch is warm and comforting and familiar, the lingering walls between them neatly broken down so that her heart brims over with joy. He gives her a final, half-hearted twirl, and she laughs loudly because she knows Ned hates to dance, but he does so with her anyway, even in the absence of music, and because she is dizzy already, her mind swimming from the wine. Her back bumps the cold stone wall as she loses her balance, and she puts her hand on Ned’s forearms, both to steady herself and to draw him closer, and she tilts her head up and kisses him, the way she used to. 

It is different from the start, her mouth open from the first and her tongue eagerly sliding between his teeth. She feels rather than hears him groan, the vibrations tickling her lips, and she moves her hands so that she can wrap her arms around his shoulders and pull him closer still. He meets her fervor, cupping her jaw in his large hands, and she can taste the wine left on his tongue – or perhaps it is only the sweetness of it still lingering in her mouth, but it is a pleasurable taste in either case. His teeth catch on her bottom lip, nipping lightly, and she gasps against his mouth, spearing her fingers through his hair, tugging slightly on the strands. She whines low in her throat in protest when he pulls back briefly for breath, lifting onto her toes to kiss him again. 

His body is solid and warm as he leans against her, pinning her between his bulk and the cold wall and the weight of him makes her feel secure, grounded. “Ned,” she pants when he drags his mouth away from hers, kissing her jaw, moving his lips to her throat and suckling the skin between his lips as he leaves a trail of hot, wet kisses along the length of her neck. His beard scratches against her sensitive skin, a sensation strange and yet intoxicating at the same time. “Ned…” And there is a hint of pleading to his name now as she tips her head back, trying to give him better access, wanting more, wanting everything and all at once. She moans when his knee slides between her legs, and she feels the press of his solid, muscled thigh against her sex through the layers of clothing between them. Instinctively she rocks forward against him, seeking more pressure, and the guttural groan he muffles against her shoulder in response sends a red hot spark of arousal right between her thighs. 

His breath spills hot over the tops of her breasts when he kisses her collarbone, raising a trail of gooseflesh all across her skin. Gently, his hand traces up from her hip, over the design of her bodice. He rests his palm on her ribs, the tips of his fingers just short of brushing the bottom of her breast – he is still her Ned even in the haze of wine, ever cautious and careful to not offend. With a moan of impatience she grasps his wrist, dragging his hand up until it settles over the high curve of her breast, and she hears his breath hitch against the hollow of her throat. “Kiss me,” she begs, and he is quick to obey, tongue plunging into her mouth with a ferocity all at odds with the gentle way he caresses her breasts, first one and then both, cupping them in his palms, rubbing his thumbs over the nipples through the thick fabric of her gown. 

She finds the way his touch is muffled nearly unbearable, and she removes her arms from around his neck to wriggle her hands between their bodies, her fingers brushing his as she tangles them in the front laces of her gown, viciously trying to tear them open. Ned’s breath quickens, so that he sounds ragged against her ear, but he does not help her, letting her lead them as she used to through the godswood to the river. But she is not so much of a fool as to think of this on par with the games they used to play, when she would kiss him out of curiosity rather than any sort of desire. 

Her face flushes as she opens her bodice, and she imagines the pink hue traveling down her neck and over her exposed breasts so that she is blushing everywhere. She’s never bared herself this way, not even to Brandon when he asked her to the last time he came to Riverrun. He had kissed her by the gate and she had felt the flutter of both arousal and fear in her belly, and his lips had twisted in a knowing smirk when she had denied him, playing the part of the shy, retiring maiden. It is wrong, she knows, to do so now, but she is aching between her thighs from wanting, nearly sick from desire, and Ned is staring at her with unabashed hunger in his eyes. 

_He won’t tell Brandon,_ she reassures herself, trying to placate the guilty conscience that tries to flare beneath the weight of drink, the thought of what her betrothed would say – of, gods, what her _father_ would say – if they discovered what she had done. _It will be a secret. He would never try to hurt me._

“Please,” she whispers, feeling her cheeks redden further, and Ned’s serious face cracks into a smile as he moves forward again, kissing her feverishly on the lips, on the chin, the neck, and down the slope of her bare breast. She shivers at how delicious it feels to have his lips on her skin, and she moans loudly when he suckles a nipple in his mouth, loudly enough that he shushes her, his beard tickling her chest, and she claps a hand over her mouth to stifle the soft sighs of pleasure that she can’t seem to keep at bay. 

“Cat,” he breathes against the corner of her mouth, and she whimpers, wrapping a hand in his hair again, wanting his lips back on her breast, and she gasps with longing when he withdraws his leg from between hers, where she’d been moving against his thigh in the futile effort to relieve the tension building there. Her displeasure is short-lived as he cups his hands beneath her thighs, lifting her up so that their hips are pressed flush, and when she spreads her legs and wraps one around his hip, she can feel the hard line of his cock even through their clothes, pressing against her sex. It should frighten her, it should bring her to her senses, but the feel of it thrills her, and she pants with her head back against the wall as she feels the answering wetness growing between her thighs. 

She is all pleasure, all sensation as he rocks against her, burying his face against her neck, kissing the damp strands of hair that cling to her skin. She arches her hips into his, knowing even as she does so that she should stop this, that she had only to say the word and he would step back at once. But she can’t keep her mind from how it would feel to urge him forward, to feel him inside her instead of through breeches and shift and smallclothes. She will not - _can_ not – but the desire gnaws at her like a physical ache. 

In the end, she does not even need to speak. Ned releases her so suddenly that she nearly crumples to the ground; he grabs her arms to keep her aloft, and she stares at him in confusion, mind cloudy from more than mere drink now. His face is as flushed as she imagines hers to be, and his eyes are dark, and when she drags her eyes down his body, she can see the press of his cock against his breeches. “You should go upstairs,” he rasps, his voice thick with arousal, and he takes a large step back as she takes a tiny step forward. She pauses, drawing her lip between her teeth, dropping her eyes to her bodice and fiddling with the laces to pull her gown closed again, glad for a distraction so that she will not have to meet his gaze. 

But she raises her eyes once more when she feels his hand on the back of her neck, fingers pinching against the nape, and the way he looks at her abates her embarrassment and makes her want to kiss him all over again. He swallows hard once, twice, and she sees the control return to his features with each movement of his throat. “Gods, Cat…” he swears quietly, and his free hand comes up to brush away the damp strands of hair that cling to her face. “If someone were to see us…” 

“Then what?” she whispers, though she knows the answer to her question already – then they are both shamed, then she is disgraced, then Ned is sent from here and they will be a disappointment to both of their houses. Then they would both be the people they have always tried so hard to never become, the ones they were never raised to be – selfish and lustful, concerned only with their own desires and not the honor of their households. 

His face twists into a bitter smile, and he squeezes the nape of her neck gently before reclaiming his hands and taking another respectful step backwards. “Well,” he starts, “they won’t let you marry Brandon.” 

It is enough to send her to her room, as he had bid, enough that her hands shake from nerves and something else entirely as she undresses herself, unwilling to call for her maid who would surely notice her rumpled state. _I cannot ruin everything,_ she tells herself firmly, and she thinks of how horrified and disappointed her father would be if her foolish actions spoiled his carefully planned alliance. He never would have expected it of her, not his little Cat who lived every moment for _family, duty, honor_ , and his surprise would make his displeasure all the harder to bear. 

But it is not enough to keep her from wishing Ned would come to her, that he would be selfish and demanding for once. She tosses and turns in her bed with hot impatience, seeking a relief and release that will not come to her, and just for that night, wishes that at least one of them had been born a bit less dutiful. 

\--

Her father refuses to allow her and Lysa to attend the great tourney to be held at Harrenhal, and it is possibly the greatest injustice in Catelyn’s seven-and-ten years. The Whents are their kin, and yet Catelyn can scarcely remember her grandfather, who last visited Riverrun when her mother still lived. 

“It is an ill place, that castle,” his father proclaims, and Catelyn later overhears him confess to Maester Vyman that he would sooner keep clear of the Mad King, who would be in attendance, and keep his girls out of his suspicious sight, as well. “I also hear the prince wishes to meet with the great lords of the land, to plan his father’s disposal, and I would keep our house from such treason,” he confesses, and Maester Vyman had murmured his approval at her father’s caution. 

Reasoned or not, Catelyn cannot help but quietly sulk, especially when Ned receives a summons from his father to join his siblings at the tourney. His eyes gleam and his mouth flattens into a grim line when she tells him to give her regards to her betrothed, and though no more has been said of his leaving Riverrun before she weds his brother, she cannot help but fear when he rides off with a small party of Riverrun knights that he will not return. 

The castle is quiet and lonely without him, for all that she has Lysa for companionship and Edmure to care for. She rides her horse along the length of the Red Fork, leaving Riverrun as a speck in the distance, and thinks if she were as wild and impertinent as Ned claims his sister to be, she would continue on all the way to Harrenhal, and surprise Ned and Brandon both there. But Catelyn does not know how to be anything other than an obedient daughter, and so although she rides farther each day, she always keeps Riverrun in her sights, however tiny it may appear. 

When the Tully banners finally appear on the horizon, her heart leaps into her chest and she gives her mare a gentle kick to spur her forward to meet the returning party. A flood of relief rushes over her when she sees Ned near the front of the party, dressed in the colors of House Stark, and it is only then that she realizes just how deeply her fear that he would not return had run. 

But Ned does return, and with him returns a swirl of rumors; the entire tourney had been rocked by scandal. The matter whispered most often about, from knight to page to Catelyn’s maid, is Prince Rhaegar’s choice of Lyanna Stark as Queen of Love and Beauty, the shame of Princess Elia and the rage of the king. Ned’s face clouds over like a thunderstorm, the one time she hears speculation voiced within his earshot as to what moved the prince to such a surprising act, and so Catelyn does not ask questions and instead hopes the matter dies with the crown of flowers, said to be blue winter roses. She hears of a mystery knight who rode under an unknown banner, called the Knight of the Laughing Tree, and many chortles about the shame the small knight piled upon the squires of House Frey (though such laughter is kept from her father, who would not appreciate such mockery of even his most lax bannerman). 

And she hears teasing and japes about their serious, solemn Ned and the lovely Lady Ashara Dayne, how he had been struck dumb in her presence and his brother Brandon had arranged for them to dance. The Dornish beauty had melted his icy exterior, she hears, and he had bedded her during the fortnight of feasting and jousting (but no, she hears others say, it had been Brandon, their little lady’s betrothed, who had bedded the girl, and she had not been the first, so they hear). 

It is this rumor that makes Catelyn sick with jealousy, with anger and resentment. She tells herself she is angry at the idea of Brandon betraying her, of taking another woman to his bed when he is supposed to be promised to her, when their wedding is but a year away. But the thought that it had been Ned, instead, hurts worse, as though someone is reaching into her chest and squeezing her heart so that she can scarcely breathe. The thought of Ned dancing with her (with how he hates to dance), of him admiring her raven-tressed loveliness and bringing her to his bed keeps her up at night, her heart thumping wildly as she tosses and turns and tries to shut the images out. 

It is in that desperate anger that she rises from her bed, pulls her dressing robe around her nightgown and puts on her slippers, and goes to his room in the dead of night. Her heart pounds loudly against her ribs, full of rage and adrenaline and indignation when he answers her short tap on his door, his chest bare and breeches creased, his eyes clouded with sleep. 

“Cat?” he asks, stunned at her appearance at such an hour, and with a quick glance down the hall to make sure that it is empty, he draws her into his room and closes the door, so that they will not be seen. “What are you doing here? Is something wrong?” 

“Is it true, what they are saying?” she demands, the words tumbling from her lips before she can stop them, before she can compose herself. “Did you bed Lady Ashara in Harrenhal?” 

He recoils, his hand falling away from where it rested in concern upon her forearm, and his eyes narrow at her accusatory tone. “Is that what you’re here for? You ask about me, and not Brandon?” he asks, with an incredulous tone, and his eyes harden so that they glint in the candlelight, grey and sharp as a steel blade. “What I do is no business of yours,” he tells her coldly, and her stomach clenches in anger. 

“You are my father’s ward,” she snaps. “Your actions reflect upon him.” 

He laughs sharply, and the sound sends a chill down Catelyn’s spine. “You don’t fear for your father’s reputation,” he accuses. “You think that because I would let you have your way, when we were children playing, that you are entitled to control my life? We are children no longer, Catelyn. I could bed half the women in the Seven Kingdoms and still you would have no right to reproach me, my lady. Perhaps you had best concern yourself with the man whose bed you will share, and where _he_ has been calling.” 

Her hand comes up before she can stop herself, and it connects with his cheek with an audible smack. She gasps, the same offending hand flying to her mouth, and she can feel tears building in her eyes – tears of shame and regret, of anger and hurt. “I am sorry, Ned,” she whispers as he touches his cheek, surprised, and she turns to leave before he can demand that she do so. 

“Wait,” he says suddenly, grasping her wrist to stop her, and when she looks back at him she is surprised to see that the anger has left his face, so that he looks regretful and tired. “I was cruel, Cat. I should not have said such a thing to you.” He sighs, and his hand comes up to her cheek, his thumb pressing against a tear that she did not even know had fallen, until he wipes it away. 

“You’re right,” she whispers, and she is unable to keep her heartbreak from lacing through each word. “It is not my concern. But…” she breaks off, unable – or perhaps unwilling, she reflects – to put to words the pain that lashes through her like a dagger, at the thought of Ned with another woman in his arms. She is being unfair, and unrealistic, she tells herself, but like the stubborn thing it is, her heart refuses to let go. 

“You are marrying Brandon, Cat,” he says softly, taking a step towards her, his hands going to cup under her elbows. As he moves closer, the candlelight illuminates his face, and she can see that his cheek has gone red from her slap, and she bites her lip regretfully. “And I will marry as to best benefit Winterfell. I cannot spend my life mourning something that could never be.” 

She swallows hard against the rising lump in her throat, but she is unable to keep her voice from swaying as she replies, “I know.” And then she is in his arms, though she will never know if she closed that little remaining distance or if he did, his hand buried in her hair and her face pressed against the column of his neck as she tries to not weep at the jealousy that still gnaws at her insides like a deadly sickness. Ned is a good man, she knows – gentle and honest and with the sweetest heart she has ever known, beneath his stoic quietude. He does not deserve a life of loneliness, and the woman he wed would be a lucky one, indeed. She would never wish unhappiness upon him, but the thought of his wedding and bedding and loving another woman wounds her like nothing else. Even the thought of her handsome, charming betrothed wooing a maid to his bed does not hurt as badly, wrong as she knows that feeling to be. 

She tips her face up and tentatively kisses his cheek, over the mark where she had hit him. He tilts his head and suddenly his mouth is on hers, warm and wet and familiar, and she moans softly, pressing against his bare chest, where she can feel the warmth of his skin underneath the thin layer of her dressing robe and night gown. Reaching between the press of their bodies, she releases the knot of her dressing robe, letting it slip off her shoulders and puddle to the ground, to that she may wind her bare arms around his shoulders. 

She gasps when Ned scoops her up, her hands gripping behind his neck for balance, and she does not protest when he drops her to the bed, her head falling against the soft pillow that smells like him, when she briefly turns her face into it. He follows her onto the bed, leaning down to kiss her on the lips, to slide his mouth along her neck, nipping lightly, and she gasps, running a hand down the expanse of his back, feeling the knobs of his spine and the ripple of the muscles beneath his skin as he shifts above her. Her heart flutters wildly in her chest, and not from apprehension or fear. 

Her nightgown has ridden up around her waist, and he pulls back to gaze at the white expanse of her thighs, to slide his fingers along them, first the outside and then the tender inside, until he reaches the edge of her smallclothes and he pauses. 

Catelyn swallows hard; part of her wants to remain silent, the part of her that aches for his touch, that longs for relief. But the dutiful part of her wins, as it has every day of her life. “I cannot give you my maidenhead,” she whispers, and he smiles at her – wistfully, but he smiles all the same. 

“I know,” he answers quietly. “I do not ask it of you.” 

It nearly breaks her heart in two, because that has always been Ned’s way – he never asks more than she is willing to give. She leaves his bed in the early hours of the morning, as much of a maiden as she had entered it, though she had felt the slide of his bare skin along hers, pressed from head to toe, his cock a hot burn against her belly. Still, she had not feared that he would forget his word, his promise, ‘ _I do not ask it of you,_ ’ as he kissed her before sliding down her body, kissing her breasts and stomach before putting his mouth on her sex. He had been uncertain, cautious and hesitant, and she had wondered with some lingering jealousy if he had done such a thing before, but then her mind had gone hazy with pleasure and she could not bring herself to wonder much at all. She had muffled her cries against the back of her hand, and her sounds had spurred him, the flick of his tongue along her folds, the grip of his hand tight on her knee as he had pulled her leg over his shoulder. She had never known a greater pleasure than the one that had wracked her body when he finished her, wrapping his lips around the nub at the top of her sex until she had come with a cry of surprise, and he had smiled at her, then, from between her legs. 

She had tried her best to reciprocate, inexperienced and uncertain as she had been, as she still is. She had only once, on his last visit, slipped her hand into Brandon’s breeches to take him in her hand; the night before she had used her mouth though she had never done so before, sliding her lips along the length of his cock, testing and teasing, and Ned’s groan of appreciation had assured her that she had been doing something right. He had gently pulled her back, with a hand in her hair, when she felt his cock pulse against her tongue, and she had wrapped her hand around him instead. It had taken only a few strokes until his seed had spilled on her fingers, and she had slept wrapped in his arms that night, her muscles sore in lingering satisfaction. She had tucked her head beneath his chin, and wished to never leave. 

And so she is a maiden still, when she slips from his grasp, from his bed before the sun crests over the horizon, when the room is still shrouded in darkness, though the sky visible through the sliver between the drawn curtains is just starting to lighten. The room is cold and the bed and the body in that bed had been so warm, and she wants nothing more than to crawl back in beside him. _I cannot be found here,_ she tells herself sternly, and Ned sleeps on as she dresses silently, the guilt already sitting like a stone weight in her stomach, though she cannot quite twist that guilt into regret. 

When she stands at the threshold, her hand on the latch, she wishes at that moment that she could be more like Lysa, a hopeless romantic, that she could think of only love and her own desires. Lysa would tell her to forsake all for love, the way they do in the stories and songs, but Catelyn is all too aware of her duties and responsibilities as Hoster Tully’s eldest daughter, the greater fate for which she was born. _I must make a great match to benefit House Tully_.

And Ned would never ask her otherwise, would never betray his brother in such a manner. Perhaps he had been right, all those months ago, when he had told her that they should learn some distance. He had been right then, as he had been right the night before, and still she never listens to his better sense. Perhaps her heart would ache less now, if she had. 

She and Ned do not speak of that night, when he comes down to break his fast, nor in the days that follow. Catelyn is learning there are a great many things that they simply do not speak of.


	3. Part 3 - Ned

It had started on the banks of the river and everything ends with the beat of a raven’s wings, and in the Riverrun godswood it begins again. 

He knows it is Catelyn approaching long before he turns around; Ned has lived in the Riverlands and been Cat’s companion long enough that he can instinctively recognize the sound of her slippers on the lush grass, the soft swish of her skirts against her legs as she walks. She stops a few paces behind him, and he can imagine the way she twists her hands together, the way she worries her bottom lip between her teeth, and yet he cannot bring himself to turn and face her, no matter how clearly he may see her in his mind’s eye. 

The morning dew seeps through his breeches at the knee, and he shivers; it is not the cold that chills him to the bone, but the weight of his loss. The heart tree in the godswood of Riverrun is no weirwood with a face he could recognize, but an old twisted oak, and yet kneeling before it is the closest he can find to his gods in the south – and how desperately he is in need of their council. 

“Ned,” he hears her whisper behind him, her voice so quiet that the word carries away on the wind. But softly as she speaks, he can still hear the tears laced in her voice, and his heart clenches at the sound. _She knows, then,_ he numbly thinks, and somehow, the shared knowledge makes the truth all the more real. 

When Lord Hoster had first called Ned to his solar, Ned had feared that he had been discovered, that the Lord of Riverrun knew of the nights he’d spent in Cat’s room, or she in his, and all of Ned’s careful restraint had been for nothing. Certainly he would never have believed that his daughter was still a maiden, no matter Ned’s intentions or the fact that many nights they would exchange nothing more than kisses. But as of late they have become heedless, too reckless. He has grown fond of the feel of her body curled against his side in sleep, and there have been nights where the sun had nearly risen before they parted for their separate chambers – it had been easy to imagine a serving maid or Cat’s septa catching glimpse of them in the halls at dawn and hurrying to Lord Hoster with the tale. 

He had been so busy turning over what he could possibly say to Catelyn’s father, to his own father, to _Brandon_ , that he had not noticed that the grim expression on Lord Hoster’s face had been tinged with pity, not until the Lord Paramount had slid a letter across the table, with a broken seal of a crested moon and falcon, and said in a gentle voice, “There is ill news, lad.” 

Ned thinks now that he would have welcomed censure for what he and Cat have done; he would be gladdened to be made to explain his actions to his father and brother, if it would mean they lived once more, that he would lay eyes upon them again. Ned has never felt truly at home in the hot south, but the hollow loneliness that pulls at his chest is an entirely new sort of pain. 

He remains seated and silent, and Catelyn keeps her distance, and he waits for the wisdom and peace from his gods that does not come. Rather, darker thoughts creep into the corners of his mind – the idea that this may be a punishment from the gods for his jealousy of Brandon, for his feelings for his brother’s betrothed. He had been greedy and covetous, and perhaps the gods had thought to reward his wish that his brother and Cat would never wed in the most horrendous way possible. 

His eyes burn, but tears do not fall. His grief sits like a hard stone in his stomach, and it almost feels as though he could reach inside himself and wrench it free, like a physical weight, and thus finally be free of it. 

Hesitantly, Catelyn kneels beside him, and when he finally looks at her, her eyes are red and her lips white where she presses them into a thin line. Her touch is light and uncertain, when she lays her fingers atop of his, and Ned thinks how much easier things would be if he could freeze his grief into anger, if he could somehow blame this turn of misfortune on Cat. But the sin is his own, and his regret does not stretch far enough to change that, and so he holds her hand tight between his own. 

Despite his years in the south, he still knows little of Cat’s seven gods, and he wonders if she, too, thinks this may be the punishment for what they have done. _Are the new gods more forgiving, of lust and greed?_

“I must go north,” he tells her, or perhaps he merely speaks aloud to himself, to sort his thoughts, as he keeps his gaze on their clasped hands. “I must call the banners. I cannot allow this to stand unchallenged.” ‘The banners,’ he calls them, not ‘his banners;’ he cannot escape the truth and yet cannot bring himself to say the words, to lay claim so boldly to something never meant to be his. “And my sister…” He breaks off, the pain too raw for him to continue speaking of Lyanna, young and willful and lost to the world, to her family. Yet his silence cannot drive her from his mind. 

With thoughts swirling wildly, he pulls his hand back to reach into the pocket of his breeches and withdraw the letter that Hoster Tully had bequeathed unto him. He knows well enough the words within, and so he merely picks at the broken blue wax seal, forcing his mind to recall only the last bit, the invitation to action. “If I take the River Road to the Kings Road, I may meet Lord Arryn and Lord Robert to treat, and then sail from White Harbor to Winterfell.” 

Catelyn nods silently, and Ned remembers when she had protested his returning to the north, had reminded him that he was to accompany her and his brother – her new husband, the future lord of Winterfell – in a time that suddenly seems long ago. They had still been children then, in their hearts, and the time for their own wants is past. “My father would never hand you over, you know, no matter what course you were to choose,” she says quietly. “His honor would never allow it.” 

Ned smiles wanly. It is true that Hoster Tully has been ever a fair, honorable lord in Ned’s time in his home, but the lord of the Trident is equally shrewd. He has not so far broached the subject to Ned, with the blow of his loss so deep and his grief so raw, but Ned can see the wheels turning in the older man’s head. Affection will win Ned time, but there had been a reason his father and Lord Hoster had sought to bind their houses in marriage, to unequivocally tie them together as allies. Catelyn may sit beside him and offer a reprieve, but he has his doubts that her father would do the same. 

And would he want it, even if Lord Hoster should offer Tully swords and service without the promise that Ned would wed Cat in his brother’s place? To marry her would be the wisest course; it would be his father’s wish, it would benefit Winterfell. There are a thousand dutiful, practical reasons Ned can name, and he wonders if that will help assuage his guilt at how sorely he merely _wants_ to, how he has wanted to for years in a daydream of impossibility. 

The dutiful, practical reasons are why he agrees that he shall return to the Riverlands after the North has been rallied, when Hoster Tully finally broaches the subject; never one to mince words, he asks pointedly if Ned plans on fulfilling the agreement between their houses. “You and Cat have always been fond of one another,” he points out, stroking his red beard in thought, and Ned nearly chokes on the wine he has been nursing. “Not for a few moons’ turn,” the Lord Paramount assures him with a dry chuckle, misinterpreting Ned’s discomfort. “There is much to be done first.” 

Hoster Tully is right; to defy the King’s command is to raise his banners in revolt, and there would be much resistance to contend with before he made such a bold move as to wed his eldest daughter to the rebellion. 

And so Ned agrees, as honor dictates, as duty decrees, to return when he is able ( _if_ he is able, the silent looming threat – it is war they embark on, after all, no child’s game) to seal the pact between their houses for good.

It is the other part – the _wanting_ , the greedy desire that spills over like a weeping wound, that draws him into rashness, to perhaps the most selfish act of his life, and instead he weds Catelyn before he departs, under the guise of darkness and in a shroud of secrecy. 

\--

The night before he is to leave the Riverlands comes so quickly that his world is still reeling from how suddenly it has been turned on its head, and that night sleep eludes Ned. Horrific images dance behind his closed eyelids – cool grey steel armour turning red hot, Brandon’s face twisted in agony, almost inhumane in pain, before melting into Lyanna’s, her eyes pleading and her lips parted in an ‘O’ to unleash a mournful howl. He tosses from his stomach to his back before surrendering, leaving his bed to light the candles once more, sitting at the small desk and composing a thousand letters in his head, to the noble houses of the North, to his brother Benjen, to Lords Arryn and Robert – a thousand letters Hoster Tully has warned him not to send. _These are dangerous times, my lord,_ he had said, and the words and tone both had sounded odd to Ned’s ears – a lord, an equal, rather than a boy, no longer a ward to be addressed as ‘lad.’ _It is better to maintain the element of surprise as long as possible._

The knock on his door is so soft that had he been abed, he would not have heard it at all. But his nerves are on edge, and his hand instinctively goes to where his dagger would be, if he were dressed, as though King Aerys himself awaited on the other side, calling for his head; or perhaps Prince Rhaegar, holding his sister and a host of secrets. 

But of course it is Cat on the other side, clad only in her night shift, her hair loose around her shoulders, wavy from the braids and coils she had worn that day. She beholds him in silence, her face composed though he can see the tension in her shoulders, in her steps as he moves quietly aside so she can enter. Instinctively, he glances up and down the hall, looking for prying eyes, and finding none, he closes the door behind her. 

Her hand lands on his chest when he turns back to her, over the beat of his heart, and a sad smile pulls at the corners of her lips. “I wish you did not have to go,” she whispers, and he thinks how different the words sound now, tinged with worry and regret, than her wish that he would remain to accompany her and Brandon back to Winterfell. “Would that I could keep you safe here, with me.” 

“This is my battle,” he replies. “This is my family, and I must find them justice, and find my sister.” 

She nods, and does not argue. A small part of Ned wishes that she would, thinks that perhaps he would be more set in his course and more certain of his decisions if he had to defend them to her, but the greater part of him loves her for her unswerving sense of honor and duty, for her silent support and strength. “Then I will pray to my gods for your safety and victory,” she says instead, “and you pray to yours for the same.” 

“You will be in my prayers, too, Cat,” he tells her softly, and she kisses him, her fingers splayed across his jaw, her mouth open and warm and sweet tasting. He sighs against her lips, feeling that old familiar pang of guilt mixed with desire deep in his belly. He wonders if he shall ever be able to kiss her without feeling as though he is betraying Brandon, if one day it will no longer feel wrong to want her. He wonders, if their positions were reversed, if Brandon would feel the same heavy sorrows or if he would merely rejoice at his turn of fortune, to be able to call a woman he loves his own. 

Cat sinks familiarly back into the pillows of his bed and he follows her down, tipping her face up to his with a gentle hand caught in her hair, his tongue lightly tracing the outside of her upper lip and then the tender inside of her lower lip. Her hand trails down his bare chest to cup his cock through his thin linen breeches, and he moans, pressing his face against the curve of her neck, nipping lightly there. Catelyn arches her back when he drops down to suckle a nipple in his mouth through the thin material of her shift, and one of his hands slips beneath the hem, drawing it up so that he can trace lazy patterns on the bare skin of her belly. 

She rolls her palm in slow, tantalizing circles, and it takes all his willpower not to thrust into her hand. Ned is used to resisting, to holding back, in all those times Cat had been warm and pliant and naked beneath him, soft and so wet when he would dip his fingers between her legs that he could scarcely turn his mind from how good it would feel to sink inside her. She has never spoken a denial to him since that first night, but she has never needed one; it has always been the line he has refused to cross, the betrayal he would not visit upon his brother, the dishonor he would not do Catelyn. 

There is a new sort of desperation to her touch as she tugs at his breeches, and quickly he shucks them, settling between her thighs and placing open mouthed kisses on her jaw and throat. He can feel the heat of her even through their smallclothes when she hooks her legs around him, heels digging into the backs of his thighs as she pushes her hips up from the bed. He shivers, fingers curling beneath her smallclothes to brush his knuckles against her, feeling his cock twitch at the small cry she utters as she tips her head back on the pillow. 

She pushes lightly at his chest and he rolls obediently to his back, letting her straddle his waist so she can draw her shift over her head. She wriggles from her smallclothes and she is sweetly, beautifully naked on top of him, so that he is unable to resist sitting up and putting his hands and mouth all over her, kissing her throat and cupping her breasts, tracing her collarbone with his tongue as he slipped his fingers between the folds of her cunt, settling a thumb on the small nub at the top of it. 

“Ned,” she whispers his name, voice thick with desire, and he rolls them again, wanting to feel her beneath him, the press of her entire body against his. Her blue eyes are hazy with lust, and his kiss is messy and desperate, all too aware that this night may be their last, that he did not know what the next day or week or moon would bring, that the only promise for them both is war. 

Her slim fingers wrap around his length, pulling his cock from his smallclothes, and he lets his breath out on a hiss, closing his eyes at the shudder of arousal that travels along his spine. She pulls him closer, an arm wrapping around his shoulders, and he pulls back as though he has been scalded when his cock bumps her sex – it is closer than they have dared before, and it is far too close for him; for all that he prides himself on his honor, he is still only a man and he has wanted her for far too long. 

“It’s all right,” Cat whispers, her hand gripping his forearm as he sits up, up and away from her. She lies languid and lush against his mattress, pale skin flushed pink, her eyes dark, and he has to look away. “We are betrothed now,” she points out quietly, and Ned laughs hollowly. 

“There is quite a distance between betrothed and wed, my lady,” he reminds her, and she flinches, the truth of his words sitting heavy between them. 

She sighs, sitting up beside him, pulling the blanket around her, and his echoing sigh is one of relief. “You are to leave in the morn,” she says softly, and her eyes, when she gives him a sidelong glance, are glassy with unshed tears. “And if you were to die?” 

He fixes his steady gaze on his hands, gripping his knees in a reminder not to touch her – they are callused, rough from hours in the training yard, but he is no seasoned soldier, no battle commander. To offer false reassurances would be Brandon’s way, not his own, and so he does not offer any grand promises. “Then your father would make you another worthy match, I am sure,” he says quietly. “Beyond that…” he hesitates, thinking of Lyanna, of the Lords of Storms End and the Eyrie, thrown into the melee by happenstance – if Ned were to fall, would Lord Baratheon continue to search for his betrothed, or would he come to accords with the king? Would Benjen, still a mere child in Winterfell, feel compelled to take Ned’s place in the fray, as Ned had taken his brother’s and father’s before him? Lord Hoster, he imagines, would be wise enough to withdraw from the conflict; perhaps he would match Cat or Lysa with a loyalist, if he thought it in the best interests of House Tully and the easiest way to keep his children safe. Ned could hardly blame any of them; this is his conflict, his burden to bear. “I cannot bring myself to think upon it,” he finishes quietly; his thoughts only bring him trouble, and he has never truly been one for supposition. 

“I wish my father did not insist on waiting to have us wed,” she says softly, her finger tracing a raised scar along his knuckle. He had been too slow that day, in the training yard – he must not make such a mistake in the days to come. “He wishes to meet with some of his bannermen, first.” 

Ned makes a hum of agreement low in his throat. “It is no small thing he is asking them,” he agrees, with a small, self-deprecating smile. “He is wise to wait before wedding his daughter to a traitor.” 

“You would never doubt his loyalty,” Catelyn replies fiercely, defensively, her blue eyes flashing when he raises his gaze back to her face. “Nor my own.” 

“No, my lady,” he answers gently. His blood has cooled somewhat, and he feels calm enough to curl his hand around hers in a gesture of comfort. “I do not mean it as a censure. I do think him wise to wait.” 

It is youth, he thinks, that makes them unwise that night, youth and impatience. He suspects that Catelyn – always dutiful as her father’s daughter, acting as the lady of Riverrun since she was a child – would only disobey so far, would never have whispered in his ear that they should wed that night if he were not already her betrothed. Were Brandon still alive, she would wed him as her father wished; but in his absence, she merely makes his intended match sooner than he had planned. 

It is still the most impulsive act of either of their lives, and Ned wonders if they are making a habit of being rebels. He waits in the stables until Catelyn appears, dressed in riding breeches so that they may make haste, and the entire way to the village on the outskirts of Riverrun’s godswood, situated between the great seat of House Tully and the small keep of Stone Hedge, he waits for her to change her mind, to demand they turn back. When she does not, he wonders if he instead should put an end to this folly, but he remains silent as they press on, their horses’ hooves the only echo in the cloak of the black night. 

The village is small and outlying enough that the septon does not recognize Hoster Tully’s eldest daughter when they come to his doors, and the clink of a few coins is enough to convince him, bleary-eyed as he is, that they need not wait until dawn to open the sept. The sept is tiny and meager, the faces of the statues of the seven gods worn and weathered so they are smooth and undistinguishable, but the poorness of their surroundings fits their dusty clothes and the absent-minded way that the septon performs the ceremony. 

They give no house names and another coin means the septon does not press them, for their houses nor for how they came to such wealth. The sept is in need of repair, and coin is coin. It is a poor ceremony indeed – in their hurry to leave, Cat had forgotten her cloak and so she had worn Ned’s during their nighttime ride. It is dark grey, nearly black in the dim candlelight, and has no direwolf; and so it is a poor marriage cloak indeed that he removes from her shoulders and ceremoniously replaces again. He wonders if that makes a difference, when he clasps it closed at her throat.

It nearly feels like playacting again, as they would as children by the river, pretending to be a lord and lady. It could be practice, merely, for the wedding her father will plan, if not for the septon’s distracted drone as he binds their hands together. Ned watches for the shadow of regret in Catelyn’s eyes when he leans in to kiss her, but he finds none. 

He is not wholly surprised; in even her quickest of decisions, Catelyn is always firm in her resolve. 

\--

Dawn is beginning to peek over the horizon, bathing the ground in greens and yellows, by the time they return to Riverrun, and they are silent as two ghosts as they slip back inside the castle, careful to watch for any servants or stewards who may be starting their day’s duties. Certainly, Ned had planned on rousing himself to ride at first light, and yet now he feels weariness pulling at his limbs, though his mind is still far too full – even fuller, now – to allow him true rest. 

“I should leave,” he whispers at the base of the rough-hewn spiraling stone stairs, his fingers caught in Cat’s, pausing her progress two steps above him. “I had thought to leave at first light.” 

Her grip tightens in protest. “The morn is young still,” she says softly in reply. “The sun will not even be fully risen for another hour or two. Surely you could spare that time for your wife.” 

The magnitude of what they have done hits him like the blow of a sword and leaves him breathless; glancing quickly over his shoulder (and how he hates the secrecy, the sneaking – it has never been a skill of his), he takes the two stairs in one step to stand alongside her, grasping her shoulders. “When I am gone, do not tell anyone what we have done, unless the time comes that you must,” he tells her, his voice no less fierce in its quietude. He has no desire to earn Hoster Tully’s ire, and if the looming war were to go badly for the Starks and their allies, he had no wish for Cat to pay an undue price for that. He mislikes lies and secrecy, but to hold the truth to themselves for a short time will do more good than harm, he suspects. 

“And if the time comes that you must,” he adds, his voice formal and his grip tight on her, “I know my brother will treat you honorably should you have need of him. Whatever you need of him.” He releases her to pull the sealing ring from his hand, placing it in her palm and closing her fingers around it. “Just show this to him, and he will know what we have done.” Benjen would be shocked, Ned thinks, that his most serious, most cautious sibling would have acted so rashly, but his shock would not extend into discourtesy to Catelyn. 

Her eyes widen in surprise, and she grasps his hands tightly between her own. “Do not say such things,” she says fiercely, and he can see her eyes glint fiercely even in the shadows of the stairway. “It is an ill thing to prepare for defeat before a battle. The gods are listening even now.” 

Ned cannot help but smile wanly at that. “I never took you as one for superstitions, Cat.” 

“Nor am I one for undue chances,” she counters, and if she can hear his unspoken question, of why she would then take the chance of wedding him, she kisses it away from his lips. “Come with me,” she pleads in a whisper when she draws back. 

There is something about it that feels inevitable, as he follows her as he did as a child shy and uncertain in his new surroundings, as a boy running both to and away from his desires. He can easily remember her overblown childish confidence, how she had loved to have her way as the eldest of her siblings, but time and sorrows have tempered that into stoic certainty. Her face is far more vulnerable than those long ago days, when they stop outside her chambers, so that he cups her face in his hands. 

“I love you,” she tells him, nearly inaudible, and he cannot help but relent – he kisses her and follows her inside. 

He perches awkwardly on the edge of her bed – now wed or not, he always feels out of place in her chambers, always aware of how poignantly he does not belong there. He can see the tremble of her fingers when she undresses, and instinctively he catches her hand in his own once more, drawing it to his lips. “Cat,” he says, his voice dry and rough from desire as he brings his free hand to the curve of her hip, stroking the pads of his fingers over the bone jutting beneath the thin, taut skin there, “we can wait.” _We should wait,_ he thinks to himself, and then if he did not return, a fine new match would not be hampered by their hasty decision; it would be as though he, and this quickly made marriage, never were. 

She traces a finger along the line of his jaw, and Ned sighs, closing his eyes briefly. “No,” she answers, and she climbs on the bed to join him, bare thighs spread as she kneels over his lap. He slides his hands along her smooth skin, rubbing his thumbs in circles, and he can feel his cock stirring in response. “I will do enough waiting for you soon enough.” 

He wishes they had the morning, the day, a moon’s turn, but the sun is already creeping through the high windows, and he knows soon her maid will arrive to dress her, so that she and her family may see him off at the gate. Carefully, he rolls her to her back, running his palm from her shoulder, along the slope of her breast, down to her pale, smooth stomach. He leans forward, pressing a kiss over her navel, following up the line of her body, kissing between her breasts, licking at the hollow of her throat where her pulse leaps at his ministrations. 

The set of her face is brave, resolved, but he can feel her nervousness in the way she restlessly traces her hands over his back after he undresses once more and settles above her. He kisses her neck, up to her ear, nipping lightly at her earlobe before whispering to her, “You know, the first time you ever kissed me, I thought it rather disgusting.” 

There is a pause as she processes his words, and then she laughs brightly at his unexpected jape, and he smiles to feel her relax beneath him. She swats his arm, scowling in mock offense. “I remember _your_ kissing _me_ ,” she accuses, and he shakes his head, slipping his hand back down her body, but now not pausing at her belly but continuing down between her thighs, stroking steadily. Catelyn hums in pleasure, her eyes half-closing, her lips still pulled into a smile that sends his blood rushing as he feels her grow wet at his touch. 

“Then you misremember, my lady. I couldn’t have been more than eight, and so you were younger still. I don’t even want to know where you learned such things. I thought the whole thing was rather awful and couldn’t understand why men and women would be so fond of it.” His smile holds a hint of wistfulness; those had been simpler days, without death and fear and looming war, where his biggest concern was to keep himself from being kissed once more. 

“And now?” she asks quietly, stroking her hands through his hair, along the breadth of his shoulders. She slides her knees up, her heel dragging along the length of the back of his leg, and he shivers, redoubling his efforts so that she moans softly, pushing up into his hand. 

“I have a better idea,” he admits, and he feels her lips curl up against his when he bends his head to kiss her. 

Her body tenses when he finally slides inside her – slowly, carefully – and he watches the corners of her lips pinch down in a wince. He pauses, forcing himself to remain still despite how sweet it feels, how hot and tight she feels around him, stroking strands of hair off her forehead while she catches her breath. With a degree of bafflement he remembers Brandon boasting of his preference for bedding maidens; Ned cannot understand why, when it seems to bring the lady more discomfort than pleasure. The thought of his brother brings a stab of pain and guilt, as it always does, and he forces himself to push it aside when Cat finally draws him closer. 

He tries to keep his movements slow and steady, pressing his face against the crook of her neck and uttering not a word of protest as her nails bite into the muscles of his back. The pleasure is nearly overwhelming, and only the tightness in Cat’s face keeps him grounded. He pauses, giving her time, kissing her sweetly before beginning again. They have waited for a long time, and so he can handle the slow, careful pace. It is more than he ever thought to have, and there is still a part of him that is sure it is too much, that remembers that she should have been Brandon’s for all that Ned knew and loved her more; that _everything_ should have been Brandon’s, and Ned is not worthy of all that has tumbled into his lap. 

It does not take long for him to spend with a rough gasp, and vaguely, he wonders what should happen if they should make a child. Hoster Tully would hardly be pleased at their clandestine marriage, but should he not return to reenact the whole thing before the bannermen of the Riverlands, Ned does not doubt that Benjen will still see the child to his rightful inheritance. 

“Stop,” Catelyn orders, and he freezes, thinking her in pain. But then she presses a thumb against the crease in his brow and he wonders if his troubling thoughts are really written so clearly upon his face. He sighs, pulling back, gathering her against him, drawing the sheets over them as the sweat on their bodies begins to cool and she shivers. 

He slips his hand back down her body, hoping to bring her some sort of pleasure, but she winces, sore, when he touches her, and her hand wraps around his wrist to stop him. When he draws his hand back, he can see her maiden’s blood on his fingers, and his stomach twists with regret. “I am sorry,” he tells her, and she shakes her head, resting her cheek on his chest. 

“We will have all the time in the world when you return,” she says firmly, and it is only one of a thousand reasons Ned lists in his head that he must return, must be victorious – for his family, for his father and Brandon who deserved to be avenged, for Lyanna who needed to be recovered, for Benjen who must not lose another brother; for all the lords who had sworn their aid against their king and liege, Arryn and Baratheon and Tully; and for Cat as well, who does not deserve to be dishonored and disgraced as a result of their impatience, and left behind. 

For all that he wishes he could remain in her bed all day, it is not long at all until he must get up and leave for his own chambers, to change and gather his things. When he goes to the gate to depart and Lord Hoster, Cat, Lysa, and Edmure gather to bid him farewell, he half expects Cat’s father to know at once what they have done, that certainly something about them must be changed. But he merely clasps a hand on Ned’s shoulder, wishing him safe travels and a speedy return, and Ned bites back the confession of their deception, wondering if the lump of guilt in his stomach is a permanent fixture. 

Cat is dressed in the colors of House Tully, looking lovely and like nothing more than a maiden of her father’s home in red and blue. When he raises her hand to kiss the back of it, he sees that she wisely does not wear the ring he gave to her. There are too many things he wishes to say, and too much is uncertain in their future for him to want to give voice to those things, and so, in his fashion, he says nothing at all beyond a murmured farewell. 

And in her fashion, she smiles sadly, as though she knows his thoughts anyway. “Be safe, my lord,” she asks, and he nods, his heart too full to otherwise reassure her. Words have never come easily to Ned Stark in the best and easiest of situations, and this is far from that. 

He bids Lysa and Edmure farewell in turn, and mounts his horse, and in the most ridiculous part of his mind, he half expects Cat to follow him as he rides through the gate. It seems they have spent their lives that way, running away from and towards one another, each giving chase in their turn, and it seems the final act of their game that she would follow him now. 

But no, Ned reminds himself, he is wise enough to know that they stopped playing years ago, and so she merely watches from her family’s side as he rides off to war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So no, I don't plan on writing through the Rebellion! This chapter ended up longer than I thought, mainly because when I originally saw this prompt, I thought of Ned and Cat kind of pulling a Robb and Jeyne (though, of course, different in its own ways), but kind of abandoned the idea once I started. And then I started this chapter and they decided they wanted to do it anyway. XD 
> 
> Hopefully you enjoyed, and thank you to everyone who has left kudos and reviewed! I appreciate each and every comment!


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